The year 2011 will mark the 10th anniversary of the international community’s initial intervention into Afghanistan, and therefore 2010 provides an ideal moment both to review the degree of progress made so far, and to ponder the course of future policy in that country. US President Barack Obama’s anno­un­cement of a troop surge of some 30,000 American troops, conjoined with a NATO commitment of an additional 7,000 troops, will mark a substantial quantitative increase in the West’s military involvement in Afghanistan over the next 12 months, but only time will tell if it will also lead to a qualitative improvement, given the scale of the local Taliban resurgence since 2006, together with the scandals surrounding Afghanistan’s corruption-riddled presidential elections in 2009.
American reinforcements will enter Afghanistan to help implement a substantially revitalized new body of population-centric COIN (Counter-Insurgency) doctrine, fresh from the perceived major success of this same doctrine in Iraq in 2007. However the gains made in Iraq continue to look fragile, while the substantially more complex nature of Afghan rural society, together with the ongoing instability in neighboring Pakistan, with its highly porous border and the safe havens that it offers Pashtun insurgents, place serious question marks over the ability of American strategy in this theater to succeed in a similar way. American plans to more than double the size of the Afghan National Army (ANA) in the space of little more than a year also raise issues regarding the longer-term economic viability of that army, and the loyalty of many of the men that will now be entering its ranks, while the international donor community remains wary of investment in a region where one in every two Afghans last year paid a bribe, according to one recent UNODC report.
The year 1986, of course, marked the key turning point and the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union’s own 10-year intervention in Afghanistan-the moment when General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev announced his determination to withdraw Soviet ground forces, and accordingly re-directed Soviet efforts both towards building up the Afghan armed forces, and toward pressurizing the Kabul government to engage in a National Reconciliation Strategy. The London conference this month now looks set to be marked by an attempt to implement a strikingly similar strategy, via the graduated handover of greater and responsibility to growing numbers of Afghan security forces, in parallel with the use of substantial financial incentives to try and break away middle ranking Taliban from the insurgent leadership. With Canada pledged by an internal democratic vote to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan in 2011, and the Netherlands likewise contemplating withdrawal from southern Afghanistan, the term “exit strategy” has now become accepted in even the highest policy making circles within NATO, even while many still recoil from committing to a phased, clear and transparent withdrawal timetable in the manner pioneered by Gorbachev. In all likelihood therefore, President Obama’s 2009 throw of the dice will prove as critical to Afghanistan’s fate as Gorbachev’s 1986 decision was; succeed or fail, Western military involvement in Afghanistan’s troubles is now reaching a climax.
The international community’s involvement in Afghanistan has thrown up a host of issues surrounding both security and development, ranging from how to deliver aid more effectively, to the correct approach to security sector reform in failed states, and the best means to conduct an effective counter-narcotics policy. The innovation of military-led Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan has proven a controversial innovation for aid delivery in fragile and conflict-torn states. Coalition strategic policy over the course of the past nine years towards state-building in Afghanistan has meanwhile veered wildly between supporting the emergence of a centralized Afghan government, and by complete contrast empowering local warlords and militia leaders to secure local governance with a so-called light footprint. The search for regional stakeholders to take up some of the burden in Afghanistan has also produced unexpected alliances, with the American government asking Russia to help re-equip the Afghan armed forces, and American military personnel providing indirect security for Chinese mining operations in northern Afghanistan. The challenge of counter-insurgency has also deeply influenced military reform debates within both America and Europe, with the various service chiefs in the UK armed forces now locked in deep debate over the question as to whether the kind of combat experienced in Afghanistan will remain an exception, or become the future normative challenge in future. The very premises of expeditionary warfare and liberal peace theory have, in short, been deeply challenged by the Afghan experience. With this in mind, the conference to be held at the Scottish Centre for War Studies at Glasgow University on March 15-16th will bring together soldiers, policy makers and scholars to explore the fundamental issues raised by Afghanistan, as that country now rushes onward to confront its next crossroads.

Dr Alex Marshall is a history lecturer at  the Scottish Centre for War Studies at the University of Glasgow